by Jack Lewis
I turned my head and looked up just in time to see a helicopter tear across the sky.
Chapter 11
At first, I thought that the inevitable had finally happened. After all these years, after all the fear and the stress, my mind had cracked. If it was just the sight of a helicopter in the distance, a shape too blurry to see in detail, I would have convinced myself I was losing it. After all, eyes could be easily fooled, and it could have been a hallucination.
The rotary blade spun in circles, and the yellow tail stretched out from the body with the words “MNN News” printed on it in white. We heard a rumble in the air, like a thunderstorm brewing miles away from us. I could believe that one of my senses was faulty, but I refused to believe two of them had lost it.
Some of the people around me had their mouths open. One woman, her fringe covering her forehead and fingers stained brown from field work, covered her ears. I understood why, in a way. It wasn’t that the sound was loud. It was just that we hadn’t heard anything like it in over a decade. It had been over a year since I had even heard the sound of a car, and it seemed lifetimes ago that I had seen anything in the sky but dark clouds and flapping birds. Seeing the helicopter cut through the air was like being thrown back into another time. We were time travellers to a world that used to be our own but had been taken from us.
I wanted to reach up into the air, grab the helicopter and pull it down. It was a relic from the past. A link to a world that, tucked in their sleeping bags in the dead of night, many of the older survivors dreamed about. Longed for. And now this relic had drifted overhead and was leaving, without making the slightest sign it had seen us.
Lou held her hand against her forehead and squinted at the sky.
“What do you make of it?” I said.
“Do you think it’s from the army?” said Lou.
“It had the name of some news channel on the side. MNN.”
Lou arched her eyebrows. “Never heard of it. ITV, BBC and Channel Four were the only channels I had.”
Reggie was beside me now. He didn’t even look at the helicopter. It seemed that for him, it could have been a fly buzzing in the air for how interesting he found it. Maybe with everything that had happened to him recently, nothing could surprise him anymore.
“It might have been a digital channel. You know, a subscription station.”
“Wouldn’t know,” said Lou. “I didn’t have the money to spend on things like that. Or I did, but I wouldn’t have been able to eat. I had to make do with the free channels. Good old BBC and ITV. I remember that during the day it was all antique shows and poorly-scripted soaps.”
“You didn’t have a job?” said Reggie.
I could feel the conversation start to get tense. “Come on now. We’ve got more important things to discuss now, wouldn’t you say?”
Reggie nodded. “Sure.”
Lou gave him a last look. Not so much dripping in hate, but there was a flash of it. Had Reggie touched a nerve?
“I was freelance,” she said, before folding her arms and looking at the sky.
The helicopter was smaller now. It was hard to judge distance over the sky, but I thought it might have been thirty miles away. The question was, where was it going? But that wasn’t the only thing I needed to know. Asking one question was opening a door, and soon everything else poured through the gap. Who was flying it? Where had they come from? What did they want? Was it really a news crew? Who, after all these years, had the know-how and resources to have a working helicopter?
Just as quickly as the questions rose, they were forgotten. As I stared into the sky at the helicopter which was growing smaller and smaller, I watched it dip. At first it was like an airplane hitting a patch of turbulence, bouncing up and down on the crest of invisible waves. Then it jerked and fell twenty feet. It straightened and then veered to the right, as if the pilot was struggling for control.
Across from me, the woman with the long fringe put her hand to her mouth. A sound let her lips. Not quite a gasp, but the true sound of surprise, which was more of a choking exhalation of breath. All around me were wide eyes and arched eyebrows. Even Lou stared at the horizon in concentration.
The helicopter wobbled up and down. It dropped a few feet, straightened up, then dropped again. Suddenly this didn’t look like turbulence, and I started to feel afraid for the pilot. From the shaking movements of the chopper it was clear he was losing his battle. Keep control, I thought.
The helicopter plummeted. It happened in seconds, but felt like it lasted hours. We stood and watched as the helicopter disappeared from view, no doubt smashing into the ground miles away from us.
The group broke into nervous chatter. One man looked inexplicably pale, as if he had watched a loved-one fall from the sky. Gregor Horlock stood at the outskirts of the group, his head taller than the rest of the crowd. He folded his arms, and he had rolled up his shirt sleeves rolled up to show tense muscles with veins sticking out against the skin. He started to walk forward. At first he gently pushed his way through the crowd, but soon others moved out of the way for him. Some were scared of him, I knew. Others felt he was a friendly giant. I still didn’t know what to think.
Dead God, you give us back what we lose. You take away what we love and return it, corrupted. Spare us, Dead God.
Even remembering the words chilled me. What did they mean? It sounded like a religious chant, as though that night I had caught the butcher in prayer. Religion itself didn’t bother me, but his choice of deity did. What the hell was the Dead God? Was it the infected? Stalkers? Later I had heard Ben use the words. I didn’t know if he had even spent that much time around Gregor, but I didn’t like it.
Gregor reached the middle of the group and then stopped. He folded his arms and looked thoughtfully at the sky. His lips moved as he repeated words that I couldn’t hear.
“So Kyle,” said Lou. “What do you think of that?”
The question of leaving camp was cast aside amid the excited murmurings about helicopters and governments. Fingers pointed in the air and traced the helicopters route and guessed where it had landed. Others looked south and threw guesses at the helicopters origins. Was it Birmingham? London? Further afield? France or Belgium maybe?
The question that few seemed to ask was the most important one. As I pondered it, a few people approached me. Charlie was there, with Ben at his side. The scientist ruffled Ben’s hair with his good hand. Mel stood with her thumbs wedged in her pockets, tipping back and forward on the heels of her boots and driving them into the mud. Lou had zipped up her jacket so that her tattoos were covered. She was doing that a lot these days, as though she permanently had a chill.
I scanned the crowd around us. Gregor stood motionless in the middle, his body still but his lips moving with silent words. Reggie was talking to a worried-looking older woman who I recognised as one of our foragers. The only person I couldn’t see was Darla.
“In my opinion,” began Charlie.
“Time for chemistry 101,” said Lou.
Charlie shook his head as if he had heard something preposterous. “I used to study renewable energy for the government, and before that I was a clinical scientist. It’s got nothing to do with chemistry.”
“It all sounds like the same old boring crap to me. Theories, theories, theories.”
“That’s because you didn’t listen in school,” said the scientist.
Lou scowled. “Maybe not. But I used to go to judo classes. I can show you, if you like?”
I held my hand out. “Cut out the bullshit. Charlie, tell me what you’re thinking.”
The scientist pulled his hand away from Ben’s hair. He went to fold his arms across his chest, but then stopped. With only one good arm, folding them wasn’t an option anymore.
“This is going to sound farfetched, but the best ideas always do. The idea that penicillin could be made from mouldy bread, for instance. Had that been suggested before Fleming, you would have been laughed out of the countr
y.”
It was starting to get cold and dark. We were approaching the season where daylight left us earlier and earlier, exposing us to longer nights where unseen shapes prowled. Something was out there, watching and waiting. We didn’t have time to waste.
“Get to the point,” I said.
Charlie took a breath. He seemed to be mentally stripping what he was about to say, as if he had a speech prepared and was being asked to edit it on the spot. Finally he spoke.
“I think someone knows we are here. And that they are advanced. And despite knowing where we are, they are content to observe us, rather than help us. In short, I think we are being watched.”
I took a few seconds to process the words. The idea that there was a settlement which had managed to stay relatively advanced was something I had thought of before. If Victoria kept Bleakholt running with schools and farms and generators, then surely there was another settlement which had thrived through the apocalypse. The idea that I hadn’t contemplated, though, was that they might not want to help others.
“Then why fly over us in a helicopter?” I said. “If they just want to watch but don’t want to say hello, there are subtler modes of surveillance.”
“I think that whoever it was has known about us for a while. They’ve watched us, and they know we’re not a threat. So they can afford to fly overhead and look at us even closer, and they don’t care if we know it.”
“This is all getting a bit X-files,” said Lou. “Are you talking about aliens?”
A smirk bent on the corners of Charlie’s lips. The scientist must have realised that Lou could easily knock him to the floor, because the expression vanished.
“I’m not suggesting that it’s E.T. I mean a settlement of people out there who are doing a good deal better than we are, and are probably sizing us up.”
Ben sat down in the muddy field with his legs crossed. He pressed his right cheek against his palm and stared into the ground. Mel stopped pivoting in the mud and pulled her thumbs from her jeans. I saw that her nails were still lined with dried blood. She must have been butchering that morning. Either that, or she just didn’t care about washing any more.
“Whoever it is, it seems pretty clear to me,” I said. “The helicopter crashed and we need to go and find out what happened. I need to know where it came from, and what they want. I need to know if they can help us. Less than an hour ago most of the people here were ready to leave camp and split up. This has bought us some time.”
“I would exercise caution,” said Charlie.
I patted the knife on my belt. “The apocalypse is sixteen years old, and I’m staring at the wrong side of my forties. If I didn’t know how to be careful, I wouldn’t even have got this far.”
Lou was staring into the distance toward the helicopter. Although we couldn’t see it through the miles of hills that blocked it, it was obvious where it had gone down. Lou turned to me.
“My dad once took me out on a helicopter. It was one of those gift card things, you know? An experience day. My old man got it for his birthday, and he decided he’d take me along. Thing is, I hated heights, and the old bastard knew it. I begged him not to take me, but he just laughed and said I needed to get over it.”
Her eyes looked clouded, and the skin on her forehead was wrinkled. The breeze blew a greasy lock of hair out of position so that it twisted in front of her face. She swept it back with her hand, and when she brought her hand away from her face, her eyes seemed clear again.
“I know Scotland,” she said. “Grey Fume is in that direction, and it’s the biggest town in miles. Odds are the helicopter was headed there for something. Problem is, we don’t know how close it got. I’m all for finding the helicopter, but I don’t want to get to Grey Fume.”
“It won’t be so bad if we’re careful,” said Mel.
Lou shook her head. “Being careful means not taking risks. And going near a town is a risk. Hell, there are a few other places on the way there that I wouldn’t go within a mile of either. Only exception I’d make is supply runs, and you know how carefully we plan them.”
Charlie spoke. “Logic tells us that this field, despite offering resources, isn’t safe if stalkers are getting to us.”
“We’ve been over this, Charlie. We looked for the nests. I used to think it was stalkers too, but where the hell are they hiding?” I said.
“The one thing we can’t do, is nothing,” said Lou.
We discussed things for an hour. It was late afternoon, and the daylight slipped away and the sky darkened around us. Everyone agreed that we couldn’t just ignore the helicopter, we had to go and find it. The question was, who would go? The camp was on a delicate balance, and a strong hand was needed to keep it steady.
“I’ll stay here,” I said. “I can’t leave the camp to Darla. She was close to getting her way today, and it’s only the helicopter that stopped her leaving. Besides, I need to look after Ben. And I’m getting old.”
“You have to go, Kyle. You’re the most experienced person here. Nobody has spent as much time in the Wilds as you have,” said Mel.
“So maybe I’ve earned a break.”
I looked at the faces around me and searched for agreement, but I found none.
“Sorry Kyle,” said Charlie. “I think that if anyone is going, they’ll need your help.”
“Damn it,” I said. “What about Ben?”
“I’ll look after him,” said Charlie.
“No. I need you with us. We might find the pilot alive, and if so, he’s gonna be hurt pretty bad.”
“I’m not a doctor,” said the scientist.
“And I’m not Indiana Jones, but we’ll have to make do.”
Mel bent down next to Ben and patted his shoulder.
“I’ll come on the trip. And we can bring him. I’ll look after him.”
I thought about it. I didn’t like the idea, but I couldn’t think of a single alternative. The fact was that we had to go and find the crash site no matter what. It was the first real hint of civilisation in years, so were we really going to turn it down?
“Fine,” I agreed. “Who knows. Maybe we’ll find Justin out there.”
As soon as I said the words, I felt a pang of sadness in my chest. I pictured my friend back in the Battle of Bleakholt. The look of resolve on his face as he told us about his plan. I remembered watching him walking across the battle field toward the infected. What had gone through his mind then? Did he think he was going to die?
At hearing Justin’s name, Mel’s face turned.
“Damn it Kyle, I couldn’t care less about him.”
Part of me wanted to drop everything, right there and then, and just go and find Justin. My friend was out there, somewhere. There were times when I thought about walking away from camp so that I could search for him, but my responsibilities wouldn't let me.
“What about Billy?” said Lou.
It was a name I hadn’t heard in a while, and it caught me by surprise.
“What about him?” I said.
“Maybe he’s out there.”
“He’s dead.”
In the battle of Bleakholt, Billy had driven away on a quad bike with a group of stalkers in tow. The stalkers had appeared during the middle of the battle, and there was no way we could have fought them at the same time as the infected. Billy had decided to lead them away, using himself as bait. I sometimes wondered what happened to him.
I guessed that he drove the quad as far as he could with the stalkers in tow. Sooner or later the fuel tank had emptied and the engine had spluttered. The bike slowed to a stop, and Billy gripped the handlebars tighter, the prospect of his imminent death hanging over him.
***
We decided to leave that night. We could have left it until morning, but we knew that time wasn’t a resource we had in abundance. After much discussion, the finally group was selected. We needed a mixture of skills if we were going into the Wilds. Even though I wasn’t happy with some of the choices, I knew that
they were necessary. The final group was me, Lou, Mel, Charlie, Ben, Reggie and finally, Gregor Horlock.
“No way am I taking him,” I had said, when Melisa made her suggestion.
“He used to be in the army, Kyle,” she said. “He’s got useful skills. Don’t just dismiss him because you don’t like him. The meat might smell bad, but if it tastes okay then you eat it.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s one of Gregor’s sayings.”
“Jesus.”
Later that night, a mile away from camp, we walked in silence toward the hills in the horizon. Somewhere east of us was the Quarryman’ Secret, the pub Kendal and I had passed. To our west were the Grey Basin woods. The legends of the countryside were silly in the daylight, but at night the idea of murderous husbands and cannibal tribes was all too plausible.